The roads are empty during the holidays because…people with families go on holiday. It’s not just the “school run” - it’s during the whole of the day that congestion is lower, because there are less people to be on the roads.
It’s all well and good saying “make the children walk to school”, but when both parents work (as is pretty much the norm nowadays) and both have to get to work on time, dropping the children off in the car really is the only option. There just isn’t time to walk them to school, walk home, and get in the car to get to work…
Already do . The sea- rail freight infrastructure is flat out as it is in the UK . So much so the have added new capacity .The Port London Gateway is a £1.5bn development covering 560 acres on the north bank of The Thames on the site of the former Shellhaven refinery near Stanford Le Hope. The largest rail freight operation in the UK only 25 miles from London. Still got to get it from the station to the shop = lots of tranny vans .
I cant speak for outer London etc. but where I live it is not faster to drive to the school. All the kids live in the catchment area and the traffic is horrendous. No one and I mean not one person drives to work in our building and that’s over 400 staff. If you work in central London it is not just viable. You need to see Fitzjohns avenue and surrounding streets in the morning.
These parents could easily walk their kids to school and jump on the tube but they are lazy plain and simple…not all but most.
Congestion isn’t just limited to inner city either.
I use the M3 each day along with the M25 and the A30.
Traffic is building up as early as 6.30am and then again from about 4pm
The standard of driving is unbelievable, i had to tell a woman this morning to turn her lights on at 7am!! (she had no idea ffs)
The slip roads off the M3 onto the M25 are like a free for all more accidents there than anywhere else due to people leaving it late to come off the motorway and then cause havoc behind as everyone else has to brake.
And whats with the 55mph brigade on the motorways? Seriously these people are more trouble than those doing 100mph
Don’t even get me started on the roads in and around Hounslow, Isleworth :w00t:
On the holiday front: Not every parent goes on holiday, plus on half term, few parents have the need to go out at precisely the rush commuting hour. So even if they are not on holiday, they’re still not in their cars driving to school.
On the other argument, I’ve always been a proponent of being within walking distance of the school you should go to…
tbh Kaos, we have been doing the no truck policy in italy (not sure about the rest of europe) since i can remember and that includes the rubbish collection. it ‘does’ help but not a lot.
the only conclusion i keep coming up with after all these years of riding is that at the top of every traffic jam there’s an imbecile who made a wrong move. so back to square one, people have to up their driving standards.
there’s something they’re gonna try in Liverpool, eliminate bus lanes. i’m really interested to see the results on that trial.
Without banning anyone from the road there few steps to minimize traffic. Majority of traffic in London is caused by drivers (rather their skills), then pedestrians with their very easy aproach to highway code and at the end of the list I would put planning (wave of green lights, puffin crossing 100 yards from junctions etc).
I just can only wish that drivers and driving will improve, I don’t believe anything else will be done (maybe except cutting/shorting lanes to give them to cyclists), for a start:
green means go, no look for gears, put down phone or check map, you should be prepared (the amber one is to find first gear)
you don’t need 2-4 length of the car between each other, especially when you waiting for traffic lights and in slow moving traffic
get the f… out of right lane, especially when you are superb, perfect, ideal, wonder driver and you are doing speed limit +5%, don’t worry about my wallet in non of your problem, you want to teach me something or teach any other motorist, first rule is stick with left lane as it is UK and you should drive on left side of the road (personally this one pisses me the most but hey I’m not the one who is payed to enforce the law)
plan your journey, if you know that you going to turn left or right change lane earlier, if you doing this on purpose you should be emasculate to get rid of “idiot” genome from society
red means stop, no “just 2-3 more cars”, stop and fucking wait for green
And after all this will be in order we may come back to baning particular road users from the roads on certain time.
Most construction sites in London will have some kind of section 60 agreement meaning they can’t work or take deliveries out of normal working hours (8am to 6pm weekdays) - if you can’t have wagons on the road before 10am and after 4pm then you’ve effectively cut the operational hours of the site down to 11am to 3pm.
Fine by me - I can have I lie in every day and be home in time for Countdown. I suspect clients might get a bit twitchy when you tell them their new office is going to take twice as long and cost 25% more though.
Practicalities of construction will mean that the rules would be unworkable anyway - concrete pours can’t just stop at 3pm because the wagons have to get off the road. Once started, it has to finish.
Other industries likely have similar restrictions that they have to work with as well.
Yeah, right, everyone should walk, we’re evil parents for driving the kids to school, blah blah blah. I’m sick of this ****. Yes, we’re “within walking distance” of our school - it’s just that we literally can’t make it walking. There are many parents who also really can’t, whatever your opinion might be.
I’ll use myself as an example (feel free to rip the example to shreds, I don’t give a toss ;-)). The very earliest we can drop our kids off at school is 7:45, for “breakfast club” (for this privilege we pay £9.50 per day for three children). It takes about 20 minutes to walk to school with the kids, and say 15 minutes to walk back at a brisker pace. So say one of us leaves the house with the kids around 7:25am, drops the kids off the very earliest moment we’re able to, and walks back at a good pace, then at the very very best case we are back home at 8am to jump into the car and drive to work. That’s an absolute best case scenario - in reality, it usually takes at least a few extra minutes at the school, either the morning staff are late or there’s a form that needs to be filled in or a lost jumper that needs to be looked for or…well, you’ll find out if you ever have kids, but things don’t happen like clockwork ;-). In reality, we’re probably home closer to 8:15.
My wife works in one of two hospitals (depending on the shift she’s rota’d for). One of them is a 30 minute walk from our house, or about the same from the kids school. It’s a ten minute drive with no traffic, but of course in the rush hour when everyone wants to get to work it’s closer to 20 minutes on a good day, plus she has to find a parking space in a staff car park which is 6-7 minutes walk away from the ward. When working at the nearer hospital, she needs to be at work at 8:15. It would be just impossible to walk - no matter how you look at it. There’s also no sensible public transport option - she’d need to get a bus into Harrow and a second bus from there. The only real option is to drop the kids off at dead on 7:45, then drive straight to work. The other hospital she works in is a 40 minute drive in traffic, luckily she can start there at 8:30 so again she just makes it when driving. Again, there is no sensible option for bus or tube that would realistically make it any faster.
As for me, I work all over the place - often I’m abroad, or working in a far part of the UK, and the wife has to deal with the kids on her own. When I am around, I’m usually working somewhere a goodly distance from home. We live in Sudbury, North-West London; today I’m in Brentwood in Essex, yesterday I was in Hook in Hampshire. When I went to Hook, I dropped the kids off at 7:45 on my way - and made it in to work at a quarter past nine, 15 minutes late for the meeting I was meant to be in. To get to Brentwood for 9 in the car, I need to leave the house at 7:30 - by 7:45, I’m on the North Circular. If I choose to go by bike instead (which I’ve been doing a lot), I can just about get away with leaving home at 8am…but I’d either be walking the kids to school in all my bike gear, or getting home and getting changed which takes time. So on those days when I’ve wanted to ride (quite a lot over the summer), I’ve dropped the kids to school in the car wearing some of the bike gear, driven home, gotten changed and ridden to Brentwood.
And then of course, there’s picking the kids up…they go to after school club until 5:55pm (which costs a small fortune), and we’re almost always there at the very last minute to pick them up in the car - how could we possibly walk?
What I’m trying to say is, in the real world it just isn’t as easy as spouting “kids should walk to school”. I can guarantee you that we’re not unique - many many families deal with the same kind of situation. And then, of course, people on the internet spout crap like “dropping kids off to school by car should be banned”. Bah, humbug.
Planning Approvals often include conditions to require site deliveries outside certain times. Anything that requires a road closure usually has to be done at the weekend. Anyone working on the site will usually be there before most commuters have had their breakfast. So no, I don’t think banning lorries will make a lot of difference.
‘School runs’ could be reduced though. Over-subscribed schools should make it a condition of getting in that you walk your kids to school in the mornings. Catchment areas are invariably less than a mile - unless you are disabled why would you need to take a car?
Traffic light phasing makes such a huge difference. ‘Incoming’ traffic should get more time on green than ‘outgoing’ during the morning rush and visa versa in the evenings. More traffic lights should be made non-pedestrian. I’ve noticed all these countdown lights going in to give people time to hobble across the road. Fine to have these in some places where there are lots of pedestrians trying to cross but at Kennington ffs?
With a bit of organisation and effort the existing system could be made to work a lot better.
And for everyone (including myself) that moans about the standard of everyone else’s driving you have to admit that 95% of traffic is moving safely and predictably most of the time. I don’t want to see the kind of draconian driving regulations and on-the-spot ‘fines’ that other parts of Europe suffer - people literally drive around in fear of being fined 2000 euros at any minute and for no particular reason… but non-indicating drivers should be stopped and have their vehicle and all paperwork checked - maybe it will help them to re-learn why indicators are important.
Syzmon - I can see what you’re saying. Public Services such as the Health Service should take account of the workers circumstances when they arrange rotas. They should be more aware than anyone about the benefits of walking instead of driving everywhere. I suspect a lot of the traffic on the outskirts of London is made up of Public Sector workers like your wife who are tied to specific hours.
Unions should be pushing for this. If you are a working parent the NHS should be ensuring that you get rotas suitable to school times. Singletons can come in whenever.
I have latch key kids that walk to and from school , the elder takes the younger system . Then they get an hour at home on their own watching rubbish on tv before nasty parents get home and make them do things like homework and hoovering and room tidying
“If you are all okay with higher prices for stuff then ban the lorrys during morning and afternoon , but without those hours available they will need to do it at night , and nightshifts always cost more and then the complaint will be the amount of noise at night from all the trucks while people are trying to sleep . Company I work for already do use the night , trucks run 24hours from various yards and they still need all day too , and they still can’t get everything everyone want’s moved when they want it moved . The trick to ending the congestion is stop wanting things and buying stuff”
Hit the nail on the head. Only just catching up on this thread as ive only just woken up…as i work nights
I deliver to a major high street retailer & we have a 24hr operation. Our lorries are never stood still any longer than to load them. Cutting our delivery times would mean TWICE as many lorries on the road at night.
We constantly get complaints about noise as it is now. (People in flats above the store)
Late night revellers are often amazed that deliveries take place at night. In fact most of our stock gets delivered at night at the moment…as we dont have to sit in traffic. Ie I can get from Hammersmith to Tower bridge in under 30 mins at night.
Also, dont forget that the stock has to get onto the shop shelves. Many smaller shops fill up during the day or after they close as they have limited space to hold stock. Doing only night deliveries only means staff would have to start earlier, before they open…which means all those shop staff workers travelling in during rush hour.
I am not sure why you took it as a personal attack?as I said I wasnt referring to outer london…I was referring to inner London where very few people drive to work. As I mentioned before people can walk their kids and then take the tube but cant be bothered (yes I have a child) both of you driving I would say is unique. I am sure pulling a figure out my ass that less than 5% of the people working the city and Central London drive to work (traffic, congestion charge and nowhere to park)Both my parents worked and I rode my bicycle to school or took public transport. I see kids who could easliy walk getting out their cars every morning. I wasnt of the opinion of banning the school run but more the carrot approach such as where one school near us (out of the 16) now does walking buses…so two adults walk around neighbourhood picking up kids on the way to school. Everone takes it in turn so you only have to do it once every three weeks or so. I certainly believe your situation to be more the exception than the rule. The mums I see every morning in their casual clothes dropping kids off certainly dont seem in a rush to get to work.
Banning fucking useless Taxi’s! I filtered passed 11 taxis in a row yesterday near Aldwych during rush hour, there are too many of these useless knobs on the road.
I was gonna type a response to your post szymon but LB decided to give me an error… now can’t be bothered to type it all again.
Anyway my argument is… if your employer doesn’t allow you to be flexible, go somewhere else.
Too many parents take their kids too school rather than letting them walk on their own. And I know of examples of parents who choose to go miles further away just for a slightly better school. So rather than trying to get their school to be better they prefer jumping in the car.
That’s who my post was written for but you took it personally. Myself, I couldn’t give a flying f*ck about how tired you are with this ****. I’m tired of parents constantly using the fact they have kids as the most important priority in the world for every and all topics. But hey, that’s just grumpy me.
